Study: Just seven percent of journalists now identify as Republicans

posted at 4:09 pm on May 6, 2014 by Allahpundit

Newsbusters points out that the ratio of Democrats to Republicans in the media has ballooned over the past 10 years from 2:1 to 4:1. True, but the real story here is independents:

Fact: The wider public is also much, much more likely to call themselves independents these days than they used to be. Eyeball the graph at the top of this page at Pew or scroll through this recent history of party affiliation at Gallup to see how dramatic the trend has been. In Pew’s data, the rise in indies comes almost entirely at the expense of the GOP; Gallup’s numbers are more mixed, but Republican ID has sunk several points lower than Democratic ID after having achieved parity during Dubya’s first term.

All of which is to say that some, maybe even most, of the media’s drift towards “independence” is part of a general American tide. What’s different about the media is that they’ve reached a higher number of independents — a clear majority, no less — than the public, which even lately tends to top out between 38-43 percent. (It got a bit higher in Gallup’s polling last fall after the shutdown.) That’s no surprise: Journalists are invested in presenting themselves as neutral, so go figure that more members of the industry would choose to identify as independent than in the wider population. It may also be that the rise of media watchdog sites online as the Internet exploded has forced more of them to shelter in the idea that, deep down, they’re “independents,” not liberal Dems. Remember, party affiliation says little about their actual ideology and how it’s shifting (or not shifting). This is purely a gauge of how people wish to see themselves politically. If you’re constantly being accused of bias, go figure that you might react by concluding that you’re an indie, not a Democratic hack.

It’s also not really a surprise that the number who identify as Democrats is down a bit since 2002. If you look at the graph above, you can hypothesize that Democratic ID among the media waxes and wanes as a reaction to the GOP’s hold on power. Two years after Reagan got elected, the number of reporters calling themselves Democrats was up from where it was in the early 70s even though the country had shifted right. (That could also be the residue of Watergate eight years earlier.) In 1992, after fully 12 years of Reagan/Bush in the White House and with a presidential election scheduled for the fall, they were really Democratic. Then, in 2002, after eight years of controlling the White House with Clinton — and with the country kinda sorta unified after 9/11 — they were less Democratic under Dubya. Fast-forward to 2013, with Obama having held the White House for four years and with four more still to come, and Democratic ID is at its lowest point yet. Easy prediction, then: As soon as a Republican’s back in the White House, the media will start professing their Democratic sympathies again.

Exit question: What’s up with the sharp rise in “other” in the graph above? If this were any other group, I’d assume that those were tea partiers who were too disgusted with the GOP to identify as Republican. But needless to say, these people ain’t tea partiers.

Exit question: What’s up with the sharp rise in “other” in the graph above? If this were any other group, I’d assume that those were tea partiers who were too disgusted with the GOP to identify as Republican. But needless to say, these people ain’t tea partiers.

Progressive-Marxists. Really, really, dumb progressive-Marxists.

Here’s a simple question for you. Which of the founding fathers did not subscribe to the communitarian ethos Calhoun deploys to rationalize slavery? *sets sundial*

libfreeordie on August 21, 2013 at 9:30 AM

None. They weren’t nascent Commies like John C. Calhoun, and full blown Commies like you. Don’t you think you need to provide some proof for such a ridiculous smear there Mr. Calhoun? You’re a history perfesser, right?

I really doubt these people are “independents,” they are just liberals who are trying to avoid admitting it to preserve the image of being “unbiased.” The media as a whole has lurched much further to the left in the last 15 years to the point where it’s almost not worth viewing as anything other than the PR arm of the Democrats.

If these guys were real independents, we’d see more balanced reporting and we are seeing no such thing.

Hmmm,
Perhaps journalists are emulating current voting trends?
I mean if you look at the electorate common (Non-journalists)
folks are leaving both parties in droves as well.
Disenchantment runs deep, maybe deeper than we all thought…

What a worthless graph! Are we really to believe these liberals disguised as “news reporters” are really “independents”? These people in the mainstream media are nothing but front men and women for the Democratic Party. Give us a break, will ya??

Exit question: What’s up with the sharp rise in “other” in the graph above? If this were any other group, I’d assume that those were tea partiers who were too disgusted with the GOP to identify as Republican. But needless to say, these people ain’t tea partiers.

It’s been my experience that it’s becoming increasingly trendy and ‘chic’ to claim to be ‘apolitical’. It’s a convenient way to duck taking any stand at all and gets the claimant through social gatherings without having to make a definitive statement on the issues one way or the other.
It’s the new ‘libertarian’, which had to be replaced in cocktail party circuits because the number of real libertarians has been rising and they do take a stance on the issues and are willing to discuss those opinions.

Exit question: What’s up with the sharp rise in “other” in the graph above? If this were any other group, I’d assume that those were tea partiers who were too disgusted with the GOP to identify as Republican. But needless to say, these people ain’t tea partiers.

Many of those “others” could be libertarians. There has been a literal explosion of libertarian (small-L) ideas on many campuses as millenials, who have irreversibly absorbed liberal “moral values” on abortion and gay marriage, begin understanding that they are screwed raw by the hippie generation, and migrate towards fiscal conservatism.

Gee. Twenty years of a constant drumbeat against the mainstream media from the right and Republicans don’t tend to become journalists? You don’t say.

libfreeordie on May 6, 2014 at 4:22 PM

.
OR, maybe, just maybe….. just going out on a limb here.
Maybe since all the major journalism schools are entrenched in far left ideology, that in order to succeed in todays media- go -along to get along- maybe these so called budding journalists throw away their values in exchange for a job. And once they have become part of the lefts agenda, they are forever trapped and swear allegiance to the Liberal Orb forever, eschewing HONESTY and common sense.
Propagandists aren’t born…they are trained. When 80% of the newsprint media support the left wing platform- maybe, just maybe Republicans Need Not Apply.

Gee. Twenty years of a constant drumbeat against the mainstream media from the right and Republicans don’t tend to become journalists? You don’t say.

libfreeordie on May 6, 2014 at 4:22 PM

LOL! Never been to J-School, have you? I have, before I changed majors (and that change had absolutely nothing to do with politics).

For a half a century now, journalism schools have been totally infested and saturated with the Academic Left; Republicans have hardly a chance to get ahead in those places.

All one needs to know about the current corrupt state of American “journalism” circa 2014 is that a couple of years ago, there was a cheating scandal at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. The students cheated on an open-book, take home exam.

If this were really true, you’d see some stories that disagree with the Democrats. That doesn’t happen too often. I don’t really care how they register, since I know the liberals propensity to lie, I care how they vote, but they’ll lie about that also.

Forget Democrat/Republican, I’d like to know what percentage are liberal/conservative. Also, I wonder if there are lot more leftists at national media outlets as opposed to local ones? That would be an interesting question to ask.

Yes, Democrats own the media, academia and popular culture. Indoctrination through these avenues has paid off in dividends thus far in relation to transforming the country, but in a historical sense we’re just getting warmed up.

Self-categorizations of this sort are nearly useless. They’re no more accurate than memory, which is notoriously INaccurate.

For example, pontificators have been declaring America a ‘center-right’ nation for decades (though less so since 2012 and Obama’s reelection). Meanwhile, the nation continues to vote for people who expand the federal bureaucracy and the entitlement state year after year after year. Progressivism has been expanding the state for going on seventy years now, successfully so, and has even done quite nicely during supposedly conservative administrations. Americans, for better or worse, are extremely comfortable with the idea of Social Security, Medicare/Medicaid, national parks, etc., etc….all run by the feds.

I don’t care what these folks THINK they are. I want an objective measure of what they ACTUALLY are ideologically. I’d be unsurprised to find a large majority are very liberal in their views, if reticent to publicly admit it, or even perhaps ignorant of it through bias and a lack of self-reflection.

The Press is largely made up of Democrat/Gimmedat Operatives with bylines.

If anyone is paying attention this goes way back.
During FDR & Truman admins … the State Department and related government supported activities were completely infiltrated with CPUS and communist sympathizers. (see: Amerasia circa 1932) It took decades to bring this FACT to light and the Presstitues were part of the active cover-up keep this communist infiltration below a whisper. They’ve despised Republicans for the duration. It hasn’t changed much in 60 years.
CPUSA = Democrat = Gimmedat = Progressive

I work in a local newsroom in a purple state and this seems about right – the one out-and-out card-carrying MSDNC watcher was fired for incompetence last year, the older more grizzled/cynical types are the ones who hate all politicians, and most of the rest are all true believers either by upbringing or because it’s a job that self-selects those who are unwilling or incapable of physical hard work…does the J-school motto of “comfort the afflicted, afflict the comfortable” sound like something that would make sense to any conservative anywhere?